Given the significant level of attention this issue has generated, confusion about what customers can do to protect themselves and the escalating threat environment Microsoft will release a security update out-of-band for this vulnerability. We take the decision to go out-of-band very seriously given the impact to customers, but we believe releasing an update out-of-band update is the right decision at this time. We will provide the specific timing of the release tomorrow.
When Microsoft updates its software, it typically likes to do so in bulk, which it often calls “Patch Tuesday.” But amid growing controversy around the vulnerability of its Internet Explorer web browser, and particularly IE6, Microsoft has decided to go “out of band” and release the update as a stand-alone fix, which it will do ASAP, it notes today.
While not specifically stated in the post, this move seems to be a direct response to word that IE6 was to blame for the large-scale Chinese attacks on a number of large web companies recently. As you have no doubt heard, this included Google, which prompted them to say they would stop censoring search results in China, and could be kicked out of the country as a result. Microsoft has denied that it was targeted in this hacking, but has admitted a vulnerability in IE was at least partially to blame. According to Microsoft, attacks aimed at the browser are still ongoing.
In noting this security upgrade, Microsoft also says that it is recommending that all its customers upgrade to Internet Explorer 8, the latest version of the browser which has better security in place. Of course, Microsoft’s own investigation has found that IE8 is vulnerable as well. It’s a nightmare.
Following the attacks, even adamant Microsoft supporters are joining a chorus that has existed for years: that Microsoft should kill off IE6. Unfortunately, there are a number of companies that still have to use the browser because they have systems in place built specifically to run with it.
That, of course, is also Microsoft’s own fault since they decided for years to use their own proprietary web code when everyone else started to rally around web standards. While the company has been getting better at that, IE remains the browser that is by far the worst when it comes to compatibility with web standards. And Microsoft is still only now making efforts to play nicer with the W3C, the body that oversees web standards. And that’s only because IE continues to bleed market share.
Here’s the key nugget from Microsoft’s statement today:
Like me, you've probably been watching the coverage of the earthquake in Haiti with a big knot in your stomach and maybe you've already donated $10 by texting HAITI to 90999, but if you want to do more (and help out the environment while you're at it), there's an easy way to do so.
ReCellular has launched a disaster relief program for the victims of the earthquake called "Phones for Haiti." All proceeds from donated phones will go straight to the American Red Cross for their work in the country.
If you're like most people you have an old cell phone lying around somewhere and this is a great way to donate to those in need and keep your electronic waste out of a landfill at the same time. ReCellular refurbishes the donated phones and then sells them to people in developing countries. Some phone models like Blackberries or iPhones could contribute up to $100 to the Red Cross.
ReCellular also accepts your old chargers, batteries and other accessories and the shipping is free. Click here to get started.
My name is Theban and I’m the Product Manager for BlackBerry® Messenger. So it’s not too surprising that I’m a BlackBerry Messenger addict. I share this post with all others that suffer the same fate. To me, BlackBerry Messenger is about staying close to the people that matter most.
Maybe it’s hard to explain, unless you get into it. I’ve slowly started converting my family (immediate and extended) into BlackBerry Messenger users and I’m already noticing pretty major changes – we chat more often, I know what’s going on in their lives and interestingly we seem to meet up more often too. And it’s ever so amusing to see the few naysayers slowly switching over because they feel out of the loop and left out.
With the recently released BlackBerry Messenger v5.0, there are now even more reasons to connect with friends and family (not sure if you have BlackBerry Messenger 5.0? Read this article to identify which version of BlackBerry Messenger you are currently running).
- Reason #5 File Transfer – Share pictures, videos, voice notes and more with multiple contacts at once. Plus, you can do it quickly!
- Reason #4 Contact Status Updates – Now you can see what your friends are listening to by viewing their song titles…who knew they were such an ABBA fan??
- Reason #3 Group Creation – By creating groups of friends, family, or colleagues not only do you stay organized but you can also instantly share calendars, lists, conversations, and updates. …never forget the milk again!
- Reason #2 SMS Messages – Now, you can send text messages from within BlackBerry Messenger so you don’t have to switch back and forth between applications. Plus, you can keep your text messaging and BBM contacts all together in BlackBerry Messenger.
- …and now, the #1 reason to upgrade BlackBerry Messenger: Barcode invitations – Surely the next new fad in the Instant Messaging world and of course, my next tattoo! Easily add a contact by simply scanning their BlackBerry Messenger barcode with your BlackBerry smartphone camera (a barcode is a 2 dimensional image that is unique to each BlackBerry Messenger user.). Want to know more about BlackBerry Messenger barcodes? Watch for an article in the next BlackBerry Newsletter.
BlackBerry Messenger is free at BlackBerry App World™ or from your BlackBerry smartphone go to www.blackberry.com/blackberrymessenger and follow the on-screen instructions.
So what’s your favorite BlackBerry Messenger feature? Post a comment and let us know!
Another piece of old research. It’s so interesting, though, I can’t help putting a note up about it. In a piece of research released in 2000, Lutz Prechelt compared C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl. (It’s gotten a fair bit of attention before, so it’s not new material)
What’s so good is the fairly rigorous and natural approach – instead of leaning exclusively on local students or one company’s employees performing some unnatural task, the researchers solicited for solutions online for the scripting languages (Perl, Python, Rexx and Tcl) and got 80 different implementations of a simple dictionary task. With these tasks they ran a lot of metrics and generated solid, comparable empirical data. Read it for the details (there is also a prettified version available).
I liked this observation, however:
For all program aspects investigated, the performance variability due to different programmers (as described by the bad/good ratios) is on average about as large or even larger than the variability due to different languages.
It’s quite profound – and even if the study itself is a bit dated and has some minor flaws – this observation probably still holds regardless!
Also, for Perl programmers, this statistic is quite neat:
The variability in execution speed for Perl programs were far lower than for the other languages except Tcl. It might be over-interpreting, but it indicates Perl is a bit more predictable – or Perl programmers are – than most of the other languages. Also, speed-wise is holding up quite good, and even the higher end of the range of execution speed is better than the higher end for all other languages.
The curious thing is that this indicates that the variability between programmers matters less with Perl (and Tcl) than the other languages. Or at least speed-wise, but the low variability also seems to be a tendency in the other metrics in the paper.
What’s so interesting, though, is how this demonstrates in hard numbers the importance of human variables in programming. It’s almost like framework matters less than the people using it.. funny, eh?
Sean Conway needed to raise funds for his start-up, Notehall.com, an online marketplace for college students to buy and sell class notes. But a year into the venture he was broke and investors weren’t willing to infuse the company with a capital boost.
Mr. Conway’s grandfather contributed $17,000 for marketing and operations, which allowed the company to hit nearly 8,000 users at Mr. Conway’s alma mater, the University of Arizona, by January 2009. But the angels and venture capitalists remained skeptical.
“I had invested my life savings and I knew there was no turning back,” says Mr. Conway, a 2007 graduate.
So last March he submitted his idea to DreamIt Ventures, a sort of entrepreneurial boot camp in Philadelphia—funded by four economic development organizations—that provides office space and mentoring to fledgling business owners, and helps set them up with potential investors. Notehall.com, one of 10 ventures chosen to participate in the three-month summer program, walked away with about $500,000 in investments.
By EMILY MALTBY of the Wall Street Journal
, October 15, 2009
You registered a domain name and set up the free Google Apps Standard Edition to get Gmail, GTalk, GCal, and GDocs running behind it. Now, take a look at some advanced settings Google Apps (for your domain) makes available.
What the what? Sometimes we refer to all of Google’s regular, free, public products as “Google Apps,” but today we’re referring to the product formerly known as “Google Apps for Your Domain” as just plain “Google Apps.” (Note to Google: Come up with a clearer naming convention.) Give this flavor of Google Apps a domain name you own—like yourfamily.org or example.com—and it puts Google services behind it. If you’ve got a regular Google Account and you@gmail.com email address, that’s cool—you can forward mail for you@yourdomain.com address to and from it. But Google Apps lets you create and manage several users associated with your domain and enable various services for them. Google Apps (for your domain) comes in several flavors: Standard Edition (free for individuals and non-affiliated groups, what we’re going to cover here), Premier Edition (for businesses), Non-Profit Edition, Education Edition, and Government Edition.
Nerd Threat Level: Orange
This flavor of Google Apps is only useful to people who own their own domain name (or want to purchase one), and who plan to set up a workgroup behind that domain. For example, if you’re Carol Brady and you register thebradybunch.com domain name, you’re going to want to set up several users at that domain. With Google Apps, Carol could create a greg@thebradybunch.com account, a marcia@thebradybunch.com account, all the way down to Cindy, Bobby, Alice, and Tiger. When Marcia gets hitched? Carol can add her spouse to the family domain. When Alice moves onto greener pastures? Carol could shut down or suspend her account.
The two key advantages to using Google Apps this way are: 1.) you get a custom you@yourdomain.com email address that you can take with you to another email provider if Gmail goes away or you want to transfer it. Your regular @gmail.com address is married to Google’s service, so you can never use it with another provider. 2.) You get system administrator-level capabilities for setting up your workgroup’s IT needs with Google’s easy interface. We’ve already done an overview of what Google Apps can do; if you haven’t already, here’s how to get it set up with your domain.
If you’re not using Google Apps but you’re interested, know that it takes a low level set of system administrator skills to get it up and running. You’ll need to configure domain settings, such as your email MX record for your domain at your registrar. It depends on who you used (I recommend NameCheap), but most likely your registrar offers a settings panel to configure these things. You’ll also have to verify your domain by adding files to the web site, most likely via FTP or another method.
With me? Good. Take a look at some of the gems buried in Google Apps’ administrative interface. Access it at google.com/a/yourdomain.com, replacing the “yourdomain.com” part with, well, your domain name.
Name Your Domain
Google Apps give you the option to give your domain a human-readable label beyond just example.com. For fun and an inflated sense of self-importance, I called mine “Gina Trapani Enterprises,” which you’ll see in many of the screenshots here. You can set up your domain’s name in the Google Apps Dashboard, under Domain Settings>General. You and your domain users will see this name in your apps tab titles, and when you sign into any service.
Map Multiple Domains to Your Account
If you own multiple varieties of your domain name—for instance, multiple top-level domains like example.com, example.org, and example.net—you can map those to a single Google Apps account using domain aliases. To add another domain to your primary domain, from your Google Apps Dashboard> Domains settings> Domain names, click “Add a domain alias” to set another up. (This is located at https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/DomainSettingsDomains, but replace “yourdomain.com” with your domain.) As you can see from the screenshot, I’ve got both ginatrapani.org and ginatrapani.com running under Google Apps. This means that if someone emails user@ginatrapani.org or user@ginatrapani.com, those messages all wind up in the same place. This also works for totally different domains, not just different top-level domains (.org, .com, .net, etc).
Manage Domain Users and Groups
If you’ve got only a few users to create, you can add them to your domain one by one. However, if you’ve got a large group, Google Apps offers a bulk upload option. To use it, you make a spreadsheet of user’s first and last names, username and password, and upload that to your Google Apps Dashboard. (Visit https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/Users, but replace “yourdomain.com” with your domain.) You can also create user groups or mailing lists with various flavors of permissions—accessible to the outside world, only reachable from people sending from inside your domain, and with custom roles for each user (member or owner). For example, a softball league might have an “Umpires” group, a “Coaches” group, and a “Players” user group.
Activate Your Services
Once you’ve set up your domain’s users, it’s time to activate the services you want to provide. Google Apps Standard comes with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, an iGoogle-like start page, Google Docs, Sites, and Mobile services. (Sadly, there’s no Google Reader. Wah!) Activate services from the front page of your GApps Dashboard, and log in and use them at the /a/yourdomain.com URL provided in green below each service.
If you click on the “More Services” link, you’ll see more (less popular) services, like Contacts (for accessing your contacts list outside Gmail in Calendar and Docs), Sites (which appears to be a simple intranet application), custom applications hosted on Google App Engine, and even Labs services that include a URL shortener and Google Moderator. I haven’t used any other services extensively besides Gmail, GCal, and GDocs in my Apps account, but the more adventurous should dive right in.
Enable Pre-Release Features
One of the biggest complaints about Google Apps accounts is that they’re usually the last to get new and experimental features like Gmail Labs. (Yes, that took an excruciatingly long while.) To speed up the process and get new features in your Google Apps account faster, in your Dashboard under Domain Settings>General, check off “Enable pre-release features.”
(While you’re there, it can’t hurt to check off “Enable SSL” box in the section below that to encrypt your users’ sessions automatically for a higher level of security.)
Create a Catch-all Email Address
One of the advantages of having your own domain name is that you have control and access to every single word combination @ yourdomain.com email address that you want. If you create a “catch-all address,” you can forward any email that comes to your domain and doesn’t match a user to a specific address. This means that if you wanted to use custom email addresses on the fly—like amazon@yourdomain.com when you register for an account at Amazon, or lifehacker@yourdomain.com when you register for an account at Lifehacker, you can do so without having to create custom addresses. Instead, set up your domain’s catch-all address to forward to your user account. To set up a catch-all address, in your Google Apps Dashboard, from the Service Settings drop-down choose Email. There you can either reject mail that comes to addresses that don’t match a user, or set up a catch-all forwarding address as shown above.
Share Calendars, Contacts, and GDocs Within Your Domain Only
Where Google Apps really shines is in its workgroup-level permissions-handling. In Google Docs as well as Google Calendar, you can choose to share docs and calendars with everyone within your domain only. That means if someone leaves your team and you suspend their account, they automatically lose access to sensitive workgroup data in one shot. You don’t have to remove them from every doc and calendar you’ve ever shared with them. Conversely, when you choose the “Share” option in Docs and Calendar, you have the option to share with everyone in your domain, instead of individuals, as shown here.
Likewise, Google Apps can automatically share a global address book across your domain users. When you add, remove, or update a user from Google Apps, with Contact Sharing enabled, everyone’s Google Apps Gmail Contacts list gets automatically updated. (So when someone changes his or her name, that change goes out to everyone’s address book in the domain, too.)
Essentially, Google Apps Standard Edition gives you IT director-level administrative control over your workgroup’s domain, for free. For more adventures in Google Apps migrations, see Scott Hanselman’s thorough writeup on how he switched his family from Outlook and Thunderbird to Google Apps.
This article only scratches the surface of what you can configure Google Apps to do. GApps users, what are your favorite tips and settings? Give ‘em up in the comments.
Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, likes her GApps goodness and a portable domain name, too. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
Reproduced with permission from Gawker Media.
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